I'm a juggler who doesn't yet have a thorough knowledge of mechanics and is wondering about some things whose answers depend on such knowledge. I'm hoping that some of you can help me out.

1. What is the weight of a juggling pattern?

Lets say that I'm juggling 7 160g juggling beanbags to a height 10 feet above the point at which they leave my hands. What is the weight of this pattern? How much force is required to maintain the pattern? How much work? What else might I want to know but don't know enough to ask?

2. I'd like to be able to answer this question for various throw heights and object weights. What is the general method?

3. I'd like to be able to determine how many calories are being used to maintain various juggling patterns. I'm guessing that once I know how much work is done, I can research the typical amount of calories burned by limited range of motion biceps curls and front shoulder raises. I don't know that I'll be able to find a really good answer and might have to roughly estimate after a lot of looking around. Does anyone have any other ideas or perhaps a method of determining how many calories are used without expensive testing equipment?

Looking forward to learning,
Michael

I'm a juggler too, but I can't say I know much about the physics of it. I've been wondering for a long time how to calculate the burned calories, so if someone can provide an answer, there's 2 of us that would appreciate it.

Well, I'd imagine it would be easier to figure out how many calories you burn juggling, THEN figure out the work. Any time you try to actually CALCULATE something based on the human body, you run into trouble because it's so complicated a system.

I gotta run now, but I will think about your questions some more:)

Any time you try to actually CALCULATE something based on the human body, you run into trouble because it's so complicated a system.

A lardass does more work :p

Lets say that I'm juggling 7 160g juggling beanbags to a height 10 feet above the point at which they leave my hands. What is the weight of this pattern? How much force is required to maintain the pattern? How much work? What else might I want to know but don't know enough to ask?

I think that these are the right questions to ask, but actually answering them might be difficult.

Assuming you have two arms, you can probably hold no more than two balls at a time. This means that you never have more than a total of 320 g in your hands at any one time.

``Juggling'' is the art of throwing and catching things in a repeatable way, so to your body there's no difference between juggling ten balls and throwing one ball up and down ten times. So this simplifies things drastically for us :)

A lardass does more work

Now now. This isn't the Religion forum. We should make no judgements about people here :)

I made a pretty long post here which was probably annoyingly full of the ignorant errors of a physics newbie. I'm removing that post in the hope that someone may still help me figure out the answers to my juggling physics questions. I'll try to be less talkative.

I think that these are the right questions to ask, but actually answering them might be difficult.

Assuming you have two arms, you can probably hold no more than two balls at a time. This means that you never have more than a total of 320 g in your hands at any one time.

``Juggling'' is the art of throwing and catching things in a repeatable way, so to your body there's no difference between juggling ten balls and throwing one ball up and down ten times. So this simplifies things drastically for us :)

For the basic 7 ball pattern (called a cascade) the only time my hands would be holding more than one ball would be during the initial releasing of the balls and the collecting of the balls at which time I would have 4 in one hand and 3 in the other. So I suppose that additional weight at beginning and end would have to be counted toward to the total amount of calories burned.

Also, though you throw each ball individually, patterns with more objects feel heavier.

Thanks again for thinking about this with me. :)

Michael